smart thinking about sex, intimacy, and life in a body

DID YOU SEE: “Prince’s Holy Lust”

Among the outpouring of tributes to the musical genius Prince, who died Friday morning at age 57, two in particular caught my attention. One is the CNN interview with community organizer Van Jones, who talked about all the ways that Prince quietly used his money and his fame to help people all over the world, an inspiring model of selfless service. You can watch that online here.

More to the point of this blog, in the Sunday NY Times, music critic Touré wrote an op-ed piece about how from the very beginning Prince embodied, articulated, and championed healing the split between sexuality and spirituality.

The piece begins:

“Let me tell you why ‘Adore’ is the central song in the Prince canon. Because in ‘Adore’ you get the commingling of two keys to understanding the man and his music: his sexuality and his spirituality. In the second verse he paints the picture: ‘When we be making love / I only hear the sounds / Heavenly angels crying up above / Tears of joy pouring down on us / They know we need each other.’ They’re having sex under a sprinkling of angel tears, which are flowing because of the angels’ admiration of their love.

“This is the erotic intertwined with the divine. The Judeo-Christian ethic seems to demand that sexuality and spirituality be walled off from each other, but in Prince’s personal cosmology, they were one. Sex to him was part of a spiritual life. The God he worshiped wants us to have passionate and meaningful sex.”